Friday, October 06, 2006

Microsoft Reduces Feature Set in Pirated Copies of Vista

Apparently our friends at Microsoft are really tired of people running pirated copies of their OSs, so they have decided to introduce a couple of new tools in Vista to prevent copy-running villains from enjoying Vista's full set of features.

The original idea of activation in Windows remains the same with Vista, but Microsoft said that it will use a stricter enforcement process, if the company cannot verify that a user owns a legal version of the operating system. While Microsoft only refused to provide product keys in the most obvious cases so far and software pirates were quickly able to work around the product key, Microsoft now says that it has integrated the protection platform "deeply into the operating system."

Here at [GAS], we like to make predictions, so here's one: Microsoft's newest protection mechanism will be hacked within 2 months of Vista's release. Now let's wait and see.

2 Comments:

Two months is also as long as it will take for them to be unable to verify the authenticity of a high profile or large number of machines, causing a media frenzy, and then the hacked versions will be the only ones that are truly your own pc, without a call centre operator having a say in what you can do with your pc.Just look at the problems with WGA so far.I'm seeing more reasons not to buy Vista every day - other than preinstalled systems, and the 'must have the latest' crowd, it will be tricky convincing XP users that they need to 'upgrade'.

And if you look on Slashdot, it also means that if you change hardware pieces, your Vista will be invalidated. If it's not reactivated within 3 days, it'll lock up. Now, isn't that fun? All the gamers who take out and replace video cards and ram all the time will be reactivating Windows constantly. Every time a server piece craps out, it'll have to be revalidated or the server will be down again in 3 days. And, as you said, the "bad guys" will crack it soon enough while the innocent people will be screwed.